Shawn Macomber

Mike Muir releases the damn near schizophrenic funk-folk-metal-punk hodgepodge The Mad Mad Muir Musical Tour under the Cyco Miko moniker today, and to mark the occasion Decibel conducted a wide-ranging interview with the iconic Suicidal Tendencies/Infectious Grooves frontman. Topics include the recent “Big 4” shows, his longtime bandmate Robert Trujillo’s insane success as an extra…

Looking to get off that sis river of dreams… …and onto the thrashing, squalling river of rapture? Let Death Angel be your guide! The band is partnering with Jackson Guitars to give away three signed JS32 Rhoads guitars. All you have to do is fill out this online form and then mosey on down to…

Yep, no denying it: Danava loves Sabbath. To its immense credit, however, the band chooses to kick it on the Vol. 4 tip rather than open another franchise in the cottage industry of Master of Reality riff reheating. Hemisphere of Shadows, the follow-up to Danava’s much-acclaimed 2008 effort UnonoU, also throws a wonderfully off-kilter early…

In the current issue of Decibel Nick Green deftly bores his way down to the heart and soul of the self-titled debut from MonstrO, the band featuring ex-Torche shredder Juan Montoya alongside former members of Bloodsimple and Danzig: “an unironic synthesis of 1970s-era blues and psych-inflected guitar rock that is so unabashadly retro it vaults…

Via Revelation Records comes this priceless video of Porcell of Youth of Today/Shelter/Judge fame being called a psychotic by Pat Sajack back in ’89.

Broken Hope lyrics always seemed like mini-synopses of potential horror sagas, so perhaps guitarist/wordsmith Jeremy Wagner’s the burgeoning second career as a dark fiction author should not come as a huge surprise. In his debut novel The Armageddon Chord — ably reviewed in the current issue of Decibel by Lucas Hardison — Wagner intertwines the…

“It takes balls to execute an innocent man.” That appalling line (allegedly) uttered by a voter in support of Texas governor and now GOP presidential contender Rick Perry has dragged the infuriating, tragic case of Todd Cameron Willingham — executed in 2004 for a deadly arson he almost certainly did not commit — back into…

I first learned of The Chumps at the dog park across from the basketball court where the opening sequence to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was shot — an appropriate setting, it turns out, considering how closely the band’s driving noise rock mirrors the churn, play, and occasional snarl of a large pack of pooches…

I’m not trying to hate on Peter Frampton here, but I’ve been a bit leery of the entire live recording subgenre ever since I stumbled upon the devastating news that my favorite live album (Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide) wasn’t actually a live album. (What, was “Mama Kin” a song about the recording engineer’s “fuckin’…

What’s it take to walk the working class death metal mile? Immolation stalwarts Ross Dolan and Robert Vigna school Scion A/V on death metal’s majesty and decay in this exclusive follow-up to the Decibel premiere of the slick video for “A Glorious Epoch” last month. As a bonus, here is high quality footage of Immolation…

So after managing to squeeze out only one record since reuniting nine years ago — the massively underrated Broken Valley — Life of Agony is apparently disbanding, sadly, and Keith Caputo has seized upon the opportunity of the band’s farewell tour to brashly announce her most controversial transition since briefly morphing into Whitfield Crane during…

In a just world Swiss actor Bruno Ganz would be better known for his work in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, Herzog’s Nosferatu or, yes, his chillingly-authentic turn in Downfall than he is for a four-minute-performance-cum-fodder for a seemingly endless series of YouTube parodies — “The Hitler Meme,” as the New York Times dubbed it…

The fifth installment of Scion A/V‘s video series is now upon us and, per usual, the company has not skimped on the heavy, producing this tasteful, high quality short for Immolation, which we at Decibel are very happy to exclusively premiere below: We last profiled these American Death Metal stalwarts last year in issue 67….

Surveying the Apocalyptic Necromancy track listing it is pretty clear those with an actual fear of gore might have their gag reflexes tested a bit by the latest fetid offerings from Goreaphobia — see, for example, “Rust Worms and the Noxious Fevers They Bring,” “Shroud of the Hyena,” or “Void of the Larva Queen.” Thus,…

Good morning, future winners! The eclectic Athens, Georgia label Mylene Sheath — the origin story/name is explained here — has a taste for driving, droning, exploding epic/ethereal metal and they’re wagering a few Decibel readers do, too. In fact, they’ll see your jaded skepticism and raise you a couple exclusive streams from the upcoming Beneath…

Were he somehow able to observe the aftermath of his own recent passing from on high amidst the ether, it is easy to imagine Seth Putnam’s glee at the kids clambering atop digital platforms to ostentatiously proclaim righteous ambivalence over his death or the Village Voice’s lengthy tut-tutting. You do not do or say the…

Following hot on the heels of the induction of No More Color into the hallowed Hall of Fame, Decibel contributor Etan Rosenbloom probes deeper into the (surprisingly supple) risen corpse of Coroner in this interview with Ron Royce and Marky Edelmann for the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. I could try to find…

Okay, so maybe the (free!) Suffer Mental Decay demo isn’t quite as showy as a mass rock plateau suicide, but, good goddamn, the not-overly-modern-death-metal-with-a-twist of Masada sure is an awesome breath of fresh air in these deathcore-laden days. Featuring ex-members of Immolation and Goreaphobia and fronted by Crucifier’s “Black Lourde of Crucifixion” Cazz Grant, this…

Flipping through the latest issue of the New Yorker this weekend I happened upon something you don’t frequently see in the pages of that august publication: A portrait of a guy in a Trivium T-shirt.

The Rev. Aaron Pepelis is a veritable heavy metal institution in the Northeast. His long-running radio show Return to the Pit — transmitted from WUNH in Durham, New Hampshire and streamed here — is about as solid as tru blackened grind industrial death rock radio gets. He is a consummate and tireless photographer whose work,…

In an typically astute review of the new In Flames disc Sounds of a Playground Fading penned for the issue of Decibel hitting stands right about now, Adrien Begrand argues — correctly, in my negligible opinion — that despite the Gothenburg quintet’s obvious (and occasionally egregious) missteps, far too much of the band’s post-Clayman output…

There’s a whole lot of scary to live up to when one christens a band The Beast of the Apocalypse, but on Henosis these down and dirty Dutch black metallers give the Dark One a run for his money. The Dictionary of Spiritual Terms defines henosis as “the soul’s purification, accomplished primarily through philosophy, culminates…

Eligiendo Muerte, online clearinghouse for the Spanish translation of our fearless Editor-in-Chief’s landmark Choosing Death, is now hosting — in conjunction with Relapse Records and Bazillion Points — a stream of the nasty upcoming Haemorrhage full-length Hospital Carnage. Tumor donors, traumageddons, growls, blastbeats, breakdowns, flesh-devouring pandemia, splatter nurses — what are you waiting for?! And…

The 28,000 power-walkers at San Antonio’s Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure last week received an unexpectedly muscular end of the trail send off from RockStar Riot, a fledgling band of civic-minded fifteen to seventeen year-olds metalheads who serenaded the crowd with impressively spot-on renditions of classic Judas Priest, Metallica, Saxon and Moxy songs…

Leave Zakk Wylde alone. He’s getting exposure for metal and that’s a good thing. Such was the gist of a surprising number of reader responses to my post last week poking fun at the Black Label Society guitarist for appearing with that metallic theater arts goofball on American Idol. (Alas, these missives remained but a…

There are probably more than a few Decibel readers who, like me, have never seen an episode of American Idol. Just never got around to it, and it’s a good thing, too, because it saved us the trouble & heartbreak of boycotting the show when Steven Tyler, like, totally sold out, man and, perhaps tempted…

Ramming Speed’s 12″ split with Texas skate shredders A.N.S. is out today, and it finds the Boston DIY thrashers pushing further into the darker, more intriguing sonic territory hinted at a couple years back on the band’s memorable Candlelight debut Brainwreck — this vinyl slab is a true smorgasbord of raging riffs, driving beats, and…

Woot, woot! This year’s Found Footage Festival is being headlined by the awesome cult documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot! Dates here. Official trailer after the jump. Bonus: The Propagandhi song “Back to the Motor League” which always reminds me of a sneering, modern day take on this movie which includes the semi-unrelated/totally awesome line, “Lord,…

Legendary shredder Alex Skolnick may have reunited with his thrash metal brethren in Testament to form some damnation a few years back, but the guitarist’s longtime forward-thinking avant jazz group the Alex Skolnick Trio marches onward nonetheless. The band’s fourth album — the ebullient, beguiling, often-as-not mind-bending Veritas — drops today, and Skolnick was kind…

Almost every band has that album: you know, the critically and/or commercially reviled dud in an otherwise passable-to-radical back catalog. Well, every Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody’s full of shit and said dud is, in fact, The…